May 26, 2008

The fervid brain of Bill Clinton knows what those other people are thinking: "It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out."

Just frantic. Indeed. Is Bill Clinton crazy? She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.

There's also this: "I've never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running."

Who are these people he's so concerned about? Apparently, the media. But what is the media's motivation to drive Hillary Clinton out and elevate Barack Obama if the secret truth is — as Bill tells it — that only Hillary can win against John McCain? The media's self-interest is on the side of more news, and Hillary versus Barack is the news. It can't be that the media want the Democrat to lose in the fall. Is there any way to collect the scattered Clintonian thoughts? Maybe: The media fell in love with Barack Obama and now they'll do anything for him.

***

By the way, what got me to post on this story was his odd use of the present tense in the quote "She is winning the general election, and he is not." That's especially odd, you know, coming from a man who got into so much trouble over the fine point of the meaning of the word "is."

Why did he speak in that too-cute way? It would have been so easy to say: "I was asked a question in the present tense. 'Is' means 'is.' In the present. The answer was no. Is means is and no means no. That was true. Period."

Ah! It doesn't help Hillary to have Bill out there, making us think about Bill all the time.

50 comments:

But what is the media's motivation to drive Hillary Clinton out and elevate Barack Obama if the secret truth is — as Bill tells it — that only Hillary can win against John McCain?

Well, not being a mind-reader like Bill, I can only speculate. But my guess is that a lot of people in the media - Olbermann and Matthews come to mind - feel damn good about themselves for supporting Obama and would like to continue supporting him through the fall whether he wins the general election or not.

"Look at me, I'm so enlightened that I'm supporting a black man for President, unlike all those racist Hillary supporters".

It's not necessarily about the outcome but about continuing to identify as an enlightened Obama supporter. These folks would vote for Hillary if she got the nomination but it would make them feel yucky.

It's this simple: a lot of people just don't like Hillary. I don't think Bill's popularity is as high as we've been led to believe. A lot of people have had these two pegged for a long time ago. Others are just beginning to notice that the two of them have no morals or sense of decency.

I think Bill is right in one thing: the media and the party are terrified of a nuclear convention, when all the Dems' racial and genderized politics come home to roost. A big fight will ruin the party (again) for decades, and the liberals don't want that. I don't know how they can stop it though. They can see the train coming, but they can't stop it in time.

Clinton spent more than six minutes calmly discussing what he called a "frantic effort to push her out" of this race, saying that no one asked Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson or Gary Hart to end their presidential campaigns early.

Why is it that both Bill and Hillary keep citing ill-fated candidates for the nomination? My God, can't they see this only makes them look whiney and losers by insinuation?

"And I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running.

True. He was too young in 1948. But I'm fairly sure he was Stateside in 1972. Selective memory has always been his problem.

Clinton also strongly criticized the media, saying that ever since Iowa they have been against his wife, making him feel as though he was living in a "fun house."

She has been treated roughly, but he is wrong to presume and therefore to exaggerate that it's solely because of her gender. In fact, she's been given the third degree by progressive media because she's a Clinton.

It would be a curious intellectual exercise to imagine how the first serious female contender for the Presidency would've been treated by media, if she weren't called Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Would media have been less antagonistic, or in the case of lukewarm Hillary supporters like the NYT, more enthusiastic about her if she'd been a blank slate, as Obama is?

One can't know with certainty, but I think so.

So long as her husband would not be controversial, and her pastor an egomaniac.

I just read some of the comments left on the ABC blog. I don't think I ever remember so many (724 so far), on any of their posts!

The first few are hilarious, starting with "Why doesn't Chelsea resemble Bill or Hillary?" (which I suspect is a Republican voter stirring the pot), but a lot of them are from very irate Democrats.

They hate her because she's a phony.

We Republicans do too, but it's curiously not for the exact same phoneyness reasons.

Left-wing Democrats hate her for being a "corpocrat" (in cahoots with corporate America) and for having been pro-war, of course.

But speaking of intellectual exercises, I wonder if and when Senator Obama loses the Presidency in November, if media will take a long hard look at themselves, as well as the progressive side of the Democratic Party.

Clearly, the Republicans chose a centrist this go-around, and didn't placate the Christian Conservatives as in 2000, or the national-defence-minded Libertarians as in 2004.

Yet by kowtowing to the progressive side, yet again, in their Party, they stand to lose it all.

Does Billy Jeff not realize he is using contradictory arguments? Only the popular vote counts (now) vs only the electoral congress counts (November).

Hillary in the primaries: "Winning" the "popular vote" (adding in a state where her main two opponents were not on the ballot, adding in a state where her main opponent did not campaign and who had almost zero name recognition, not counting all the states where voters turned out to caucus).Hillary in the general election: Winning the Electoral Congress whether she wins the popular vote or not.

One reason why is exemplified in her comments about the 1968 election. Forget the assassination element; she conveniently omits that in June the primary campaign was barely two months old, the anti-war left having brow-beat Johnson into stepping aside on 31 March.

Hillary has been actively campaigning for almost a year and a half now, on top of at least fifteen years of positioning and planning.

If the people who invented the politics of personal destruction haven't been able to dig up any real dirt on Obama by this point ... there probably isn't any.

Hillary as also demonstrated (clearly) her utter inability to run even her own $200 million campaign, in spite of more that a decade lead time.

Ann this post is a mess. Not sure what you're even attempting to get at here. If I were Bill Clinton I would advise Hillary to tell this party to get fucking bent. It's not even disputed she is the stronger general election candidate against McCain. She's getting pushed aside for a stuttering airhead gaffe machine who she completely destroyed in the debates, and who she has beaten handily going back 3 months.

"Foxes sometime in search of food would enter into the grape orchards and devour the grapes and spoil the crop. However, the little foxes were too small to reach the grape bunches so they would chew on the vines and it would kill the whole vine. Instead of the farmer just losing his crop, he would lose his vine which was more disastrous."

How is it scattered thinking to say that the media have an anti-Hillary, pro-Obama bias? Seems pretty clear to me. And if your point is that the media are mostly liberal and therefore can't be against a Democrat, what's with all the liberals who hate her?

"But speaking of intellectual exercises, I wonder if and when Senator Obama loses the Presidency in November, if media will take a long hard look at themselves, as well as the progressive side of the Democratic Party."

No, Victoria, they will just say we're all racists and be done with it.

When given the choice, the big media outlets always gravitate towards the most viable candidate on the left. In 1992 they were willing to settle for Bill Clinton because, being out of the White House for a dozen years, they were willing to consider him their most viable option, and (ironically), the presence of Hillary and her liberal credentials made them believe that if elected, he wouldn't govern as a DLC type, but as one of them -- which he tried to do, until the 1994 midterm debacle.

What's interesting here is whether or not Bill Clinton is just desperately spinning, or is in a true state of denial, either that the conservatives have been right all along about there being a media bias towards the left, or that, in the eyes of many of their former allies on the left, the Clintons are now no better than, if not George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, than at the very least Joe Lieberman.

Hillary (and her various mouth pieces, including Rendell, Bill, Ferraro, Garage at 12:17, Chris at 1:51) are running thematic permutations, most of them meaningless to reality.

They have tried race and class, and the current theme is sexism and media bias.

Whatever theme seems to suit the moment they will use, when the basic fact is that Hillary is responsible for being unlikeable, running a bad campaign, and making numerous tactical errors.

Focusing enough on the actual issues (whether its Obama's lead in fundraising, solvency, states won, voted delegates, popular vote, superdelegates, or Hillary's insolvency, unlikeability, tactical errors in blowing off states) causes a thinking person to be pretty clear about where things are headed.

It's telling that she is quoted back in December saying the campaign will be wrapped up by February 5th. At the same time, her support among blacks was above 50% and she had the biggest fund raisers backing her. However, she never really expected to have to compete beyond a certain period and when it is discovered by a liberal media that there is someone with largely the same positions, but less annoying, THAT person will start to be more appealing.

It's also interesting that people like Vbspurs make the assumption that McCain, loved by few, with a campaign that can barely gain traction, is assumed to be the winner come November.

In other words, people like to prognosticate not based on reality, but on personal bias or preference. When the Clinton's do it, they are just being the same old wiley manipulative scoundrels they always were, but when we do it (here in the comments) we are just being stupid.

Maxine, we do count/non-count nouns differently in the UK than you guys do here, and some habits are hard to break.

E.g.: "The Miami Heat are losing" (UK), not "The Miami Heat is losing" (USA).

Tricky though, as e.g., government is singular, but when you refer to what you Americans might call an administration, a collective body, you would say, "Government are there for another 2 years" (UK).

"I've never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running."

Yo, Willy! Ever hear of George Bush, either one?

The Clintons are willing to blame everyone but themselves for their failures, most recently Hillary's failure to garner sufficient delegates to assure nomination. They may be the two most self-centered beings on planet earth.

I'm not always a fan of the precious Peggy Noonan, but this column nailed what's wrong with Hillary Clinton, and perhaps why she's losing despite all the achievements her husband is claiming for her.

So, to address the charge that sexism did her in:

It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.

It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support Mrs. Clinton.

It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they'd give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they'd call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they'd realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks.

It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton's supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say "Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other's bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it's like that for the boys and for the girls."

And because the charge of sexism is all of the above, it is, ultimately, undermining of the position of women. Or rather it would be if its source were not someone broadly understood by friend and foe alike to be willing to say anything to gain advantage.

Of course the media fell in love with Obama, whether they want him to defeat McCain or not. Problem: they do not separate their emotions from the work as journalists. I am an academic, and there are students I think are just awesome, but I cannot grade them a certain way because they are "just awesome." I expect the media to separate their own personal endorsement from reporting. But clearly, they dont.

I think we're underestimating the Media's long term planning. Should Obama win, what will the legacy media write or say that brings in readers or ad revenue? With Democrats in the White House and running both chambers of Congress how can they criticise the next administration without being racist? What controversies can they stir up to bring eyeballs to the page? Their very jobs are at stake, people.